Dear Sandra, Deborah and Participants,
At the fag end of the third week, I feel submerged in this course. When I joined the course, I thought I will give a day or so and complete my task. But now it has become habit to visit nicenet.org everyday and read what all participants are discussing. The credit of this involvement in the course goes to Sandra and Deborah. Their comments, emails and feedback are very encouraging. Thier freindly approach has helped me in my involvement in this e-Course.
This is the major change I felt in last week.
Well, so far the task based activities are concerned, I have completed following tasks:
1. delicious bookmarking
2. Reading CALL material/websites for LSP (Listening, Speaking and Pronunciation) skills.
3. Reviewing skill building website for oral/aural skills.
I already had delicious page but never used it. I know that it is for bookmarking but as I never gave serious consideration to it, I never realised its true importance. As it was mandatory in this course, I bookmarked several sites. Now I understnad that delicious.com is really delicious. The best advantage I will make is in sharing useful links with my students. Now I will have to ask my students to go and visit my delicious page to learn about useful weblinks. Earlier, I have to give them links through email or sms.
For the second task, I read several CALL4LSP related material and links shared by facilitator and participants. It helped me in understanding what sort of research in made and ongoing in this field. It is always a very good learning experience from what others are doing. It saves our time and energy form repetiting similar experiments.
For the thirst task on skill building website, I wrote about sparknotes.com. Thought I got several positive responses from other participants for this website, One of the particiants (Luba) draw my attention to the point that we have to discuss LSP skill developing website and not literary skill developing website. Thus, I posted another item with the same objective. The entire discussion and activity was fruitful.
By and large, this week was fruitful on the groud that I am getting engrossed in this course. Now it seems I am drawing myself near to some of the participants and facilitators.
Your comments are invited.
Dilip (India)
Friday 29 January 2010
Monday 25 January 2010
Week 2 (18-24 January): The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches
Blog: Weekly Reflection
The task I did in last week can be bulleted as below:
* Describing Class and Learning Objectives
* Web Searching
In first task (i.e. Class description and Learning Objectives), the ABCD formula was very helpful. What exatly i did in class description is not repeated here as it is already posted on www.nicenet.org. Here, I would like to share my views on this task. I learnt the importance of understanding my Class. I also learnt the importance of Learning Objectives. Before going into this mental process, I 'thought' I know my class very well and my objectives are very clear. But as I undergo this process, I realised that how mistaken I was in both these aspects. Ans surprisingly, these are very vital aspects of teaching. One very important thing I realised is the wide range of variations among the students. To cater the needs of these studetns, Learning Obhectives must be more precise. This mental exercise gave me very good learning experience. Today, I can say, I understand my class better and have framed better Learning Objectives for them.
The second task was on Web Searcing. We were asked to test some new Web Searching Tools (WSTs) in lieu of Google. It was unique experience. Rarely, I have tried any other WST than Google. I came to know that there are some highly specialised WSTs which can help us in fast, precise and specific search results. These noodletools are very important in WebQuests. Earlier when I replied to the Pre-Course questionnaire, I said that my WebQuest skills are excellent. Now I say I have yet to learn a lot in WebQuests.
It is well said that the true learning begins when we realise what we 'dont' know.
How I might apply it in my teaching? Very important question to ponder over. It is not only necessary to learn but it is equally important to see how our learning an affect our teaching.
Firstly, after assessing my class on ABCD parameters and Learning Objectives, I would have a curriculum whih is precisely showing its learnig objectives. The LOs will be shared with the class, which was not done earlier.
Secondly, the use of search engines in the teaching will go an overhaul change. Earlier it was all Google, Google, Google. Now we will have more specific WSTs for varied searches. The students always came with the complain that it is very difficult to seach specific items on Google. It is like seaching needle in the stock of hay. Now, I suppose, they may be happy browsing internt for WebQuest.
Dear Sandra,
I hope you will give new comment after reading the entire blog. Your first comment came much earlier than I expected, which I have mentioned in the below given comments also.
Dear Participants,
Your comments will help me in better understanding of what I am learning from this course.
Thanks and regards,
Dilip (India)
The task I did in last week can be bulleted as below:
* Describing Class and Learning Objectives
* Web Searching
In first task (i.e. Class description and Learning Objectives), the ABCD formula was very helpful. What exatly i did in class description is not repeated here as it is already posted on www.nicenet.org. Here, I would like to share my views on this task. I learnt the importance of understanding my Class. I also learnt the importance of Learning Objectives. Before going into this mental process, I 'thought' I know my class very well and my objectives are very clear. But as I undergo this process, I realised that how mistaken I was in both these aspects. Ans surprisingly, these are very vital aspects of teaching. One very important thing I realised is the wide range of variations among the students. To cater the needs of these studetns, Learning Obhectives must be more precise. This mental exercise gave me very good learning experience. Today, I can say, I understand my class better and have framed better Learning Objectives for them.
The second task was on Web Searcing. We were asked to test some new Web Searching Tools (WSTs) in lieu of Google. It was unique experience. Rarely, I have tried any other WST than Google. I came to know that there are some highly specialised WSTs which can help us in fast, precise and specific search results. These noodletools are very important in WebQuests. Earlier when I replied to the Pre-Course questionnaire, I said that my WebQuest skills are excellent. Now I say I have yet to learn a lot in WebQuests.
It is well said that the true learning begins when we realise what we 'dont' know.
How I might apply it in my teaching? Very important question to ponder over. It is not only necessary to learn but it is equally important to see how our learning an affect our teaching.
Firstly, after assessing my class on ABCD parameters and Learning Objectives, I would have a curriculum whih is precisely showing its learnig objectives. The LOs will be shared with the class, which was not done earlier.
Secondly, the use of search engines in the teaching will go an overhaul change. Earlier it was all Google, Google, Google. Now we will have more specific WSTs for varied searches. The students always came with the complain that it is very difficult to seach specific items on Google. It is like seaching needle in the stock of hay. Now, I suppose, they may be happy browsing internt for WebQuest.
Dear Sandra,
I hope you will give new comment after reading the entire blog. Your first comment came much earlier than I expected, which I have mentioned in the below given comments also.
Dear Participants,
Your comments will help me in better understanding of what I am learning from this course.
Thanks and regards,
Dilip (India)
Thursday 14 January 2010
Week 1 (11-17 January): Creating an Academic Blog
Dear Deborah and Sandra,
Dear Partiipants of Online Course on Webskills for Teachers,
I apologize for giving the links of my already existing blogs instead of posting new blog for this course.
It is indeed great idea to create a new blog with a few things in mind. As suggested by Deborah and Sandra, we have to keep in mind what sort of things happen when we are creatign blog for teaching.
Identifying problems helps in preparing theory for 'blogs for teaching'. The followers do not have to 'repeat' the same mistakes we made on our way.
I note down what sort of problems I faced while creating this blog. I am using blogs since long and have created several blogs for my self, my students, friends and relatives. But this time I kept a close watch and identified following problems:
1. Availability of NAME is very crucial. It is always difficult to have name of our own choice. More popular names are never 'available'. One has to go for 'unusual' names. I passed almost half an hour online in selecting a name for the blog and at last has the compromise with the this one. If teacher thinks and discusses several names (more usually, unusual names) before going online. It will help them get better name and need not compromise.
2. Some of the default setting create problem. One is 'enabled transliteration'. I do not know how transliteration was enalbed. What ever I typed was transliterated into Hindi language. I had terrible time during my last workshop teaching teachers how to create blog for teaching. Today, I got some time to resolve the issue. I have to go into 'Setting' and clicked last button 'Enable Transliteration' to disable it.
3. There are old and new version of Edit on blogger. Older one allows to post image and video. The new one (perhaps) does not have easy image and video editing/posting servies. (I need to check it agian to see latest upgradation).
Dear Partiipants of Online Course on Webskills for Teachers,
I apologize for giving the links of my already existing blogs instead of posting new blog for this course.
It is indeed great idea to create a new blog with a few things in mind. As suggested by Deborah and Sandra, we have to keep in mind what sort of things happen when we are creatign blog for teaching.
Identifying problems helps in preparing theory for 'blogs for teaching'. The followers do not have to 'repeat' the same mistakes we made on our way.
I note down what sort of problems I faced while creating this blog. I am using blogs since long and have created several blogs for my self, my students, friends and relatives. But this time I kept a close watch and identified following problems:
1. Availability of NAME is very crucial. It is always difficult to have name of our own choice. More popular names are never 'available'. One has to go for 'unusual' names. I passed almost half an hour online in selecting a name for the blog and at last has the compromise with the this one. If teacher thinks and discusses several names (more usually, unusual names) before going online. It will help them get better name and need not compromise.
2. Some of the default setting create problem. One is 'enabled transliteration'. I do not know how transliteration was enalbed. What ever I typed was transliterated into Hindi language. I had terrible time during my last workshop teaching teachers how to create blog for teaching. Today, I got some time to resolve the issue. I have to go into 'Setting' and clicked last button 'Enable Transliteration' to disable it.
3. There are old and new version of Edit on blogger. Older one allows to post image and video. The new one (perhaps) does not have easy image and video editing/posting servies. (I need to check it agian to see latest upgradation).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
.jpg)